The results suggest that adolescence is a crucial time for the influence of CSA experiences on substance abuse.

Previous reviews of alcohol treatment research have indicated that in the majority of studies there are no sex differences in treatment outcome. The current meta-analysis was used to measure the magnitude and direction of trends of sex difference in treatment outcome. The results indicated that women had better treatment outcomes than men in the first 12 months after treatment while men showed greater improvement than women in follow-ups after 12 months. However, the estimated differences were small and derived from a heterogeneous sample of studies. Evidence from the studies in the meta-analysis is used to highlight the importance of genderrelated factors which may impact on the processes and outcomes of treatment.In particular, sex differences in physiological responses to alcohol, in social norms for alcohol, and in socio-cultural experiences are considered important areas for future investigation in alcohol treatment research.

No abstract

The effect of automatic priming of behaviour by linguistic cues is well established. However, as yet these effects have not been directly demonstrated for eye movement responses. We investigated the effect of linguistic cues on eye movements using a modified version of the Stroop task in which a saccade was made to the location of a peripheral colour patch which matched the “ink” colour of a centrally presented word cue. The words were either colour words (“red”, “green”, “blue”, “yellow”) or location words (“up”, “down”, “left”, “right”). As in the original version of the Stroop task the identity of the word could be either congruent or incongruent with the response location. The results showed that oculomotor programming was influenced by word identity, even though the written word provided no task relevant information. Saccade latency was increased on incongruent trials and an increased frequency of error saccades was observed in the direction congruent with the word identity. The results argue against traditional distinctions between reflexive and voluntary programming of saccades and suggest that linguistic cues can also influence eye movement programming in an automatic manner.

A combined narrative/meta-analytic review of the results of a number of well-conducted randomized controlled clinical trials indicates that there is no evidence that usual treatment delivered in an in-patient or residential setting is superior to treatment delivered on an out-patient or non-residential basis for the treatment of alcohol dependence. Nor is there any evidence to support the view that in-patient/residential treatment is superior to day patient intervention, or that longer in-patient treatment is superior to shorter in-patient treatment. The studies suggest that in-patient/residential care should not be considered as a standard setting for intervention for alcohol dependence. However, the results of these trials do not contradict the view that in-patient/residential care remains suitable for specific sub-populations of alcohol dependent individuals, such as those requiring closely supervised detoxification, respite care, or who (because of the extreme severity of dependence on alcohol) may require an intense form of supervised intervention. Research should be conducted to establish whether treatment on an in-patient basis does yield an advantage for this last group.